MA Thesis Topics

Current Students

Ilaria Casini

MA
Early modern theories of looking and their social impact on both early modern and contemporary audiences, feminist and critical race theory, exhibition studies, critical museology and public engagement programs of historical heritage

Richard Chapplow

MA
16th/17th Century, Northern/Southern Europe, Painting.

Adrian Deveau

MA
Queer affect and phenomenology; Contemporary Russian protest; Post-1990 internet art; Feminist pedagogy; Queer art and popular culture; Methods of appropriation; Soviet visual culture

Megan Jenkins

MA
Turkish modern art, postcolonial and feminist theory, critical theory, the production and management of histories, theories of melancholia

Lucas Kling

MA
Early modern European print culture, the relation between the human and the machine, and the replication, dissemination, and circulation of printed images.

Jeremy Kramer

MA
20th-century Japanese and American craft, East Asian art and transculturation

Kristina Parzen

MA
Post-colonial studies and theory, Indigenous methodologies, Indigenous ways of knowing and understanding space and place, spatial theory, cartography, representations of space

Marcus Prasad

MA
Representations of urban and domestic space, American postwar art and film, gothic and “post-horror” cinema, queer theory, media studies

Catherine Volmensky

MA
Late medieval and early modern cross-cultural encounters in the Mediterranean world, with a focus on issues of mediation, transmediality, pilgrimage art, and image-object interrelations

Alice Wang

MA
History of art and science collaboration, its emergence out of the military-industrial complex of MIT in the late 1960s, and its relation to the depoliticization of logical empiricism from the Vienna Circle to the Unity of Science

Graduated 2018

Krista Bailie

Irene Choi

Blake Finucane

Stella Gatto

Sherena Razek

Graduated 2017

Alison Ariss

Chanel Blouin

Esme Cunningham

Katherine Damon

Madeline Ullrich

Graduated 2016

Laura Dickson

Thesis Title: (Area: Modern and Contemporary art)
Advisor: John O'Brian

Tristan Ignas-Menzies

David Norman

Heather  Woolley

Michael Zhang

Graduated 2015

Siwin Lo

Thesis Title: Work and the Work of Art: Agnes Martin, 1959-1964

Graduated 2014

Judy Jansen

Thesis Title: Framing a Shifting Paradign: Art & Anatomy in the Early Modern Era

Jeff O'Brien

Thesis Title: Archive as History: Godard, Gericault and Hirschhorn's "Costa Concordia"
Advisor: John O'Brian – Reader(s): Charlotte Townsend-Gault

Jocelyn Plant

Thesis Title: Ornament in the Science of God: the Precious Covers of the Lindau Gospels

Denise Ryner

Thesis Title: Space is a Participant: Strategies of Activation and Presence in the Contemporary Practice of Brian Jungen
Advisor: Charlotte Townsend-Gault – Reader(s): Dana Claxton

Rachel Smith

Thesis Title: Beyond Epistemic Disobedience: The Importance of Humor in Fred Wilson's Mining the Museum
Advisor: Katherine Hacker – Reader(s): T'ai Smith

Jayne Wilkinson

Thesis Title: Art Documents: Complicating the Visible in the work of Taryn Simon and Trevor Paglen
Advisor: John O'Brian – Reader(s): Jaleh Mansoor

Jacqueline Witkowski

Thesis Title: Ever present, never presented: Suzanne Lacy, feminisim, and quilting
Advisor: T'ai Smith – Reader(s): John O'Brian

Graduated 2012

Victoria Addona

Thesis Title: Boundaries of License: The Materiality of the Painted Facade in Cinquecento Venice.
Advisor: Bronwen Wilson – Reader(s): Carol Knicely

Toby Lawrence

Thesis Title: Whose Body? Nicholas and Sheila Pye's 'The Coronation'
Advisor: John O'Brian – Reader(s): Jaleh Mansoor

Dana Loughlin

Thesis Title: The Entomology of Ornament: 'Essai de Papillonneries Humaines' and the Metamorphoses of Eighteenth-Century Decorative Art
Advisor: Maureen Ryan – Reader(s): Carol Knicely

Robyn Rossmeisl

Thesis Title: Encountering the embodied mouth of hell: the play of oppositions in religious vernacular theater
Advisor: Carol Knicely

Russell  Stephens

Thesis Title: Slanging the emperor: Honoré Daumier’s Le Monde illustré caricatures of the 1867 Exposition Universelle
Advisor: Maureen Ryan – Reader(s): John O’Brian

Shalini Vanan

Thesis Title: 17th-Century Neapolitan Paintings of the Flagellation of Christ: Temporality, Pain & Performance
Advisor: Bronwen Wilson – Reader(s): Carol Knicely

Danijela Zutic

Thesis Title: Seeing again: geometry, cartography and visions in the work of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-C.1354)
Advisor: Carol Knicely – Reader(s): Bronwen Wilon

Graduated 2011

Lisa Andersen

Thesis Title: Rosso's Fury : engraving, antique sculpture, and the topos of death
Advisor: Bronwen Wilson – Reader(s): Carol Knicely

Larissa Grzesiak

Thesis Title: Spolia's Implications in the Early Christian Church
Advisor: Catherine M. Soussloff – Reader(s): Carol Knicely

Samuel Sackeroff

Thesis Title: The testimonial gesture : temporality and mediation in representations of John the Baptist
Advisor: Bronwen Wilson – Reader(s): Marv Cohodas, Maureen Ryan

Vanessa Sorenson

Thesis Title: Messages to the public: Krzysztof Wodiczko and Jenny Holzer vs. the Reagan revolution
Advisor: Serge Guilbaut

Kelsey Wilson

Thesis Title: Visualizing the Imperial Mission of the Salvation Army
Advisor: Maureen Ryan – Reader(s): Joy Dixon

Erica Zacharias

Thesis Title: Gordon Matta-Clark's photographic spaces
Advisor: Catherine M. Soussloff – Reader(s): John O'Brian

Graduated 2010

Carla Benzan

Thesis Title: Conditions of Sociability: Mobility, Mutability and Medaglie in Early Modern Networks and Publics
Advisor: Bronwen Wilson – Reader(s): Serge Guilbaut, Jillian Taylor-Lerner

Jean Kares

Thesis Title: Playing Host to Cultural Prestige: Transmission and Translation Through Two Manchu Kesi
Advisor: Tsao Hsingyuan – Reader(s): Katherine Hacker

Rebecca Lesser

Thesis Title: Mid-Century Canadian Portrait Photography
Advisor: John O'Brian

Amanda Sciampacone

Thesis Title: Monumental Failure: British Representations of the Black Hole Memorial of Calcutta
Advisor: Maureen Ryan – Reader(s): Katherine Hacker

Devon Smither

Thesis Title: Beyond the Mirror: Nude Self-representation in the Work of Lilias Torrance Newton, Prudence Heward, and Pegi Nicol MacLeod
Advisor: John O'Brian – Reader(s): Bronwen Wilson

Ivana Vranic

Thesis Title: Michelangelo’s Rondanini Pietà: Materiality, Temporality and Transubstantiation
Advisor: Bronwen Wilson – Reader(s): Carol Knicely

Angela Zhang

Thesis Title: Ignorant Gaze: George MaCartney's Negotiation with China in 1793
Advisor: Hsingyuan Tsao, Serge Guilbaut

Graduated 2009

Ashley Belanger

Thesis Title: Avalanche and File: Plotting in the field of cultural production
Advisor: John O'Brian – Reader(s): Scott Watson

Greg Gibson

Thesis Title: Moving Forward: The "Save the Kogawa House" Campaign and Reconciliatory Politics in Canada
Advisor: Scott Watson – Reader(s): Chris Friedrichs

Adah Hudson (Neuman)

Thesis Title: Sailing the Boat of Tradition: Mi Fu’s Revision and Innovation in Calligraphy
Advisor: Hsingyuan Tsao – Reader(s): Bronwen Wilson

Sara Mameni-Bushor

Thesis Title: "Failed & Fell: Fell to Fail" The Narration of History in the Works of Tacita Dean and Jeremy Deller
Advisor: Serge Guilbaut – Reader(s): William Wood

Laura Matwichuk

Thesis Title: Slide Show, Monograph, Cibachrome: Nan Goldin's Colour Photographs in Three Forms
Advisor: William Wood – Reader(s): John O'Brian

Heather Muckart

Thesis Title: The Face of Death: Prints, Personifications and the Great Plague of London
Advisor: Bronwen Wilson, Carol Knicely

Joshua Schwab

Thesis Title: Recordando los Binnigula’sa’ - Multiple voices in the Lienzo de Guevea y Petapa
Advisor: Marv Cohodas – Reader(s): Bronwen Wilson, Hsingyuan Tsao

Kimberley Tuttle

Thesis Title: A View of the City: The Urban Landscape and its Architectural Imagery in the Ashburnham Pentateuch
Advisor: Carol Knicely – Reader(s): Bronwen Wilson

Graduated 2008

Ian Pui Adam Chu

Thesis Title: Crossing the Borders of a Merchant Class: Imagining and Representing Elite Status in the Portraits of the Hong Merchants of Canton
Advisor: Hsingyuan Tsao – Reader(s): Maureen Ryan

Jeffrey DeCloedt

Thesis Title: How to Read the Bill Reid Bill
Advisor: Charlotte Townsend-Gault – Reader(s): Hsingyuan Tsao

Kristen Lambertson

Thesis Title: Mariko Mori and Takashi Murakami
Advisor: William Wood – Reader(s): Hsingyuan Tsao

Zoe Pei-Yu Li

Thesis Title: Consoling Frustrated Scholars: A Copy of a Parting Gift by Wen Zhengming
Advisor: Hsingyuan Tsao – Reader(s): Maureen Ryan

Lisa Gayle Marshall

Thesis Title: What Design Means to Art
Advisor: Bill Wood – Reader(s): John O’Brian

Milena Tomic

Thesis Title: Rituals and Repetitions: The Displacement of Context in Marina Abramovic's Seven Easy Pieces
Advisor: John O'Brian – Reader(s): William Wood

Graduated 2007

Gabriela Aceves Sepulveda

Thesis Title: Art and Possibility: From Nationalism to Neoliberalism. The Cultural Interventions of Banamex and Televisa
Advisor: William Wood – Reader(s): Serge Guilbaut

Jamie Linn Kemp

Thesis Title: Score & Structure in Ritual Representation
Advisor: Carol Knicely

Christian Patrick Monks

Thesis Title: The twilight years of pictorialism in Vancouver the art photography of Percy Bently during the Second World War
Advisor: John O Brian – Reader(s): William Wood

Graduated 2006

Mique'l Askren

Thesis Title: From Negative to Positive: BA Haldane, 19thc Tsimshian Photographer
Advisor: Charlotte Townsend-Gault – Reader(s): Marvin Cohodas

Simon McNally

Thesis Title: Distension and Dissension: Artforum and the Seventies
Advisor: William Wood – Reader(s): Ken Lum

Graduated 2005

Maja Dujakovic

Thesis Title: Dancing with the Dance of the Dead: Cemetery of the Innocents and the Ramifications of the Macabre
Advisor: Carol Knicely – Reader(s): Maureen Ryan

Laura MacDonald

Thesis Title: Bring the pain Bob Flanagan, Sheree Rose and masochistic art during the NEA...
Advisor: Bill Wood – Reader(s): John O’Brian

Catherine (Kate) Steinmann

Thesis Title: Study from Nature: Women, Mobility, and the Politics of Urban Vision in Harper's Weekly , January 1860
Advisor: Maureen Ryan – Reader(s): John O’Brian

Graduated 2004

Juan Andres Gaitan

Thesis Title: The Indigenous as an Allegorical Figure in Antionio Caro's (Momenaje a Manuel Quintin) Lame and Cildo Meireles' (Zero Cruzeiro)
Advisor: Rita Eder – Reader(s): Carol Knicely

Jaffar Khonsary

Thesis Title: Between Clutter and Containment: Situating Eugene Atget's Interieurs parisiens
Advisor: John O'Brian – Reader(s): Maureen Ryan

Cecilia Olivares Farias

Thesis Title: A Hunger for Freedom, A wall of Separation Migrant Votive Images
Advisor: Carol Knicely – Reader(s): Rita Eder

Monika Szewczyk

Thesis Title: Unsafe Building: Coming & Reading int Vito Acconci's 'The Red Tapes'
Advisor: John O’Brian – Reader(s): Scott Watson

Graduated 2003

David Matthew Alexandre

Thesis Title: Looking Through Ruin: Canadian Photography at Ypres and the Archive of War
Advisor: John O'Brian – Reader(s): Rose Marie San Juan

Paloma Campbell

Thesis Title: Looking at Annibale Carracci's 'The Butcher Shop'
Advisor: Rose Marie San Juan – Reader(s): Maureen Ryan

Rajdeep Singh Gill

Thesis Title: Indigenous Spectres, Subversive Lilas: Encounters Between Nawabi Authority, Colonialism & Popular Ritual in Lucknow
Advisor: Katherine Hacker – Reader(s): Sunera Thobani

Jasmina Karabeg

Thesis Title: Caravaggio's Crucifixion of St Andrew: From the Abstraction of the Law to the Afflicted Body
Advisor: Rose Marie San Juan – Reader(s): Carol Knicely

Kim-Ly Thi Nguyen

Thesis Title: Vincenzo Campi's Rocptta Eaters (c. 1585): Viewership and the Early Modern Market
Advisor: Rose Marie San Juan – Reader(s): Carol Knicely

Sadira Elfrieda Rodrigues

Thesis Title: Neither Red Nor Black! Cuba, Africa, and the Politics of Posters
Advisor: Serge Guilbaut – Reader(s): Scott Watson

Kari Leanne Shepherdson

Thesis Title: Fists, Youth, and Protest: Oshima Nagisa's Filmic Rebellion in 1960
Advisor: Serge Guilbaut – Reader(s): Joshua Musto